Death

Was listening to "the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond" again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXGVFJqSqqg&feature=related), and thought it appropriate inspiration for this poem.

The idea of a "low road" is a common means of reaching death throughout many cultures, but so is the sea :)

My major critique question about this one is: I tried to make it sort of a narrative, but I'm worried its a bit too prose-ish.
Other than that, what do you think of the different "refrains" - too much? Any additional comments?

"The Wide Ocean Road"

So you’ll take the high road

And I’ll take the low,

And I’ll be in Scotland ‘afore ye,

For me and my true love

Will never meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

~~~

The oracle-crone came today

from across the sea

wrapped in her wolfskins

and bearing runes in her fist.

She speaks with cracked, salt-dried lips.

I am a little sea-bird

that was shot from the ship’s prow.

We have sailed

seeking the well of wisdom

at ocean’s end,

guarded by the elf-king of old

with his storm eyes.

In the gloaming we taste

the sea-salt on our tongues.

I am the gray sea-bird

that passed my night beneath the waves

with nothing but brittle feather-spines for a cloak

and with the salt taste of blood in my mouth.

She is the feathered serpent

from beyond the sea,

come to tell us all

in a voice smelling of brine

one day, even the great ships

will pull only sand in their wakes

and their iron hulls

will lie like empty oyster shells along the beach.

Only the ferryman will remain.

The ferryman sails

bundled in his heavy cloaks and furs,

drifting in a place

where his hair must always be haloed

with ice.

The oracle-crone catches me,

a ghostly sea-bird in her palm.

One day, she says,

even she will be set out for the waves

with sea-salt crystallized on her lips

and her body will wait for the wooden timbers

to carry her down.

Alice

I am AMAZED at the speed with which I cranked this out. Considering it has rhyming in it. For a prompt. Okay, so 2 hours isn't exactly a SHORT period of time, but still.

I'm quite pleased with this ^^. Playing with rhymes a bit on this one. Rhyming styles used: imperfect rhyme, internal rhyme, and eye rhyme. These are all wikipedia-able.

I really quite love this BUUUUUUUUUUUT as usual, I have some questions for critique:
1) most importantly, I have that random little "cheshire" line in there that I absolutely love, but I'm worried makes NO sense to anyone else; well I mean, it's not SUPPOSED to mean something, but there is a rhyme (HAH! literally! bahahaha...) and reason to it. Thoughts on it?
2) I'm concerned that some of the imagery is just a tad random (not including the cheshire line), even for an Alice-y, madness-y poem. Thoughts on this topic?
3) Line breaks: what do you think? I've gone a bit more rambly for this...
4) If you have any specific questions or comments, let 'em rip!

"Alice of Sky and Earth [A Mirror is a Looking-Glass]"

[Cheshire treasure shepherd, nest, sir, chest. of.
                                                                          drawers.]

I am only as real
as the teeth that spread themselves into a smile,
the eyes that wait to see the air ripple.
I fear people who call things simple.

I kneel at the hearth and dirty my knees in the sienna-brown earth
and throw fistfuls of ashes
against the mountains—
great stalactites growing down into the cover of clouds.

The theory of relativity
says that I can
borrow time by
turning back the hands of clocks.

I would remove
those shining prison teeth one by one.
My body roves
the length and breadth of well-shafts,
roves like the machines built for Mars; but not for me.
I am above and beyond
the dictations of up and down.

At the seaside I may translate sky to ground
and very gentle, tremble, tremble—and drown.

Cold Mountain, North Carolina

So yeah. Not much to say about this one. Not as happy with it as the others, but I still like it. Any comments appreciated :)

"Cold Mountain: the Madonna's Many-Colored Cloak"

Motherly, she is.

Just before dawn she lies
soft, gray and pink,
an elegant contour
of earth against sky.

She grows to noon
when she sits
straight-backed and proud -
a Catholic grandmother at mass
in her starched green dress
with pine-needle lace.

Humble me, Lady.
I lay myself flat
against your stone
and spin with you for a while.

At dusk I leave her again.
She sighs, raw and imperious
in robes of purple and gold.
Her face falls first
into its familiar wrinkles,
then drifts quietly into twilight blue.

I love her slopes best
on damp mornings
from a distance.
The clouds pour like milk
over her shoulders.

Texture

Accompanying music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIIKHFN0svc
I have been wanting to write a poem about this video for AGES! I think it's magnificent and there's so much texture in it! Still not entirely sure what I think of the poem itself. Not as tactile as I'd like. But I tried to sort of give the language a little texture, too - what do you think of the gentle drawl?

I'd love comments on imagery/composition/flow/etc

"Love Song from the Wool to the Lace"

Unroll me,
smooth and gentle-like.
Gentle like wool.

Darlin',
you can rock
back and forth to me -
I whisper between your fingers,
soft 'til I've been gathered up by rough wooden sticks
and made whole again -
a sweet tangle of colored thistles,
clinging to your ankles.

I can be rubbed and crushed
safely between palms,
but I barely dare to take you in my hands,
my spider-lace.

You are twisted silk, dear,
sighing Victoria wallpaper,
finger-tip tender.

Twirl, lover.
Let me feel your threads
flick their kisses against my cheeks.
You are the prettiest thing I've ever seen.

We nod our heads together,
long hair and silk skirts
tickling our toe-tops.

Tenuousness

 So, I'm worried some of the imagery here is a little too...cryptic. But for now I can't seem to find a way to say what I mean without explaining too much. Doing so is DIRECTLY contrary to the immortal words of Mark Twain.

 And we must avoid that at all costs, mustn't we?

"Mouse-child"

I am
delicate.

I should be a sprite
that would go whirling
across the air
with unbuttoned coat.

But thighs and breasts
give me a name
that is not mine.

I must walk as a mouse,
the way I was taught
in ballet class.
I must not be an elephant.

But, Oh! to be wrinkled and gray!
To walk like a pendulum,
great legs swinging!

I am tenuous, tentative -
a child told
she is too old now,
she can't say what she likes
anymore.
That she must take care
to keep her knees smooth
and unskinned
from tree-climbing.

We Will Become Silhouettes

I hate the working title for this. I'd love some suggestions. I'm also wondering about the da-da's...good/bad? needs work?
Theme music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEILFf2XSrM

"Absurd"

She creates and destroys
in the same breath,
a cardboard figure
molding clay with her tongue
and her thick thighs.

She hums a storm down on your head.

[da, da, da, da.]

The clouds—silk
cutout shapes—
bend and stretch
against the sky.
There is no hardness
anymore.

[da    da    da    da]

The dandelions are
fragile to the touch,
a single breath blows
their puffs away.
She gathers them in her arms
and tries to turn them yellow again.

[da
        da
                da
                        da]

The war begins and ends
with a minute of radio silence.
Days fall like yellow weeds.
In this endless wind
even the stones are only
silhouettes.

But she can bend them with her fists.

[da
da
da
da.]

Let us begin...

Hello. I'm Jes and I'm a poet. After completing the 2011 National Poetry Writing Month and wanting to keep myself in the habit of writing often, I've decided to challenge myself to complete 100 poems on 100 topics. Some of these topics are people, some books, some songs, some places. Some are concrete objects, and some are abstract concepts. My intention, at the end of this project, is to self-publish a book of poetry.


So!


Let's get started! I've left comments open to anyone who wishes to leave something constructive. If I have particular requests for critique I will post them. Though not all the poem titles will be the same as the topic they are written for, I will be using the topics themselves as the official post title for each poem, to keep everything neat, and so you can look through them by topic. Enjoy!


My list of poem topics that I will be using is as follows:

<sub>1. We Will Become Silhouettes [ X ]
2. Carbon</sub>[  ]
_{3. Pulchritude} [ X ]
_{4. Tenuousness} [ X ]
_{5. South by southwest} [  ]
_{6. Cold Mountain, North Carolina} [ X ]
_{7. Thunderstorms} [ X ]
_{8. Psalms} [ X ]
_{9. Asheville, NC} [ X ]
_{10. James Taylor} [ X ]
_{11. North Carolina (in general)} [ X ]
_{12. Particle physics} [ X ]
_{13. Isaac Asimov} [  ]
_{14. Terraforming} [  ]
_{15. River of Lover} [ X ]
_{16. Bogota} [  ]
_{17. Erinaceousness} [  ]
_{18. Virgil} [  ]
_{19. Zen Buddhism} [  ]
_{20. Voodoo} [  ]
_{21. the Arctic Circle} [  ]
_{22. Fairytales} [ X ]
_{23. Leonardo da Vinci} [  ]
_{24. Dream transcription} [ X ]
_{25. Sojourn/the Monomyth} [ X ]
_{26. Herbalism} [  ]
_{27. King Arthur} [  ]
_{28. Gothic style} [ X ]
_{29. Change} [ X ]
_{30. Heirlooms} [ X ]
_{31. Texture} [ X ]
_{32. the Universe} [ X ]
_{33. the 'Verse} [  ]
_{34. Quietness} [ X ]
_{35. Immortality} [  ]
_{36. My Hands} [  ]
_{37. Famous Quotation} [  ]
_{38. Classical Composition} [  ]
_{39. Thunderbird} [ X ]
_{40. Drowning} [ X ]
_{41. Down to Earth} [ X ]
_{42. Superfluidity} [  ]
_{43. Piezoelectric Surfaces} [  ]
_{44. Personhood} [  ]
_{45. Constellations} [  ]
_{46. Hitchhiking} [  ]
_{47. Electricity} [ X ]
_{48. Folklore} [ X ]
_{49. History of Writing} [  ]
_{50. Weaving} [ X ]
_{51. Bonfire} [  ]
_{52. Salt of the Earth} [ X ]
_{53. Enigma} [  ]
_{54. Hermit} [  ]
_{55. Language} [  ]
_{56. Thought} [ X ]
_{57. Cliff Diving} [  ]
_{58. Fear} [ X ]
_{59. Boundaries} [ X ]
_{60. Flightless Bird, American Mouth} [  ]
_{61. Soul} [ X ]
_{62. Quartz Crystal} [  ]
_{63. Eclipse} [ X ]
_{64. Python} [ X ]
_{65. Steam} [ X ]
_{66. Elementals} [  ]
_{67. Hippy} [  ]
_{68. Ice} [  ]
_{69. the Nine Muses} [  ]
_{70. Alice} [ X ]
_{71. Technology and Humanity} [  ]
_{72. June flowers} [ X ]
_{73. Frivolous} [  ]
_{74. Taoism} [  ]
_{75. Comers Rock, Virginia} [ X ]
_{76. Black-Eyed Susans} [  ]
_{77. Where Our Destination Lies} [  ]
_{78. Sapience} [  ]
_{79. Good Omens} [  ]
_{80. Puzzle Pieces} [  ]
_{81. South African Tea} [ X ]
_{82. Odysseus} [  ]
_{83. Hinduism} [  ]
_{84. Hermaphrodeities} [  ]
_{85. Barefoot} [  ]
_{86. Divination} [  ]
_{87. Grapefruit} [  ]
_{88. Rocks and Water} [ X ]
_{89. Equinox} [ X ]
_{90. Time} [ X ]
_{91. Resurrection/Reincarnation} [ X ]
_{92. Qualia} [  ]
_{93. Complexity from Simplicity (Emergence)} [  ]
_{94. Luck} [  ]
_{95. Satellite} [  ]
_{96. Magpie to the Morning} [ X ]
_{97. Albert Einstein} [  ]
_{98. Death} [ X ]
_{99. Vincent Van Gogh} [ X ]
_{100. Cycle} [ X ]